How do I truly optimise storage on my Mac?

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Level 2

222 points

How do I truly optimise storage on my Mac?

I have a home laptop and a work laptop, both MacBook Pros. The home machine is set to "Download Originals" and store all my iCloud Photos, which is then backed up to Time Machine. It is my master library. The work machine is set to "Optimize Mac Storage", and I mainly use it for browsing and sporadic editing.

My work machine's Photos Library.photoslibrary file size currently stands at 31.74 GB. I have a 250 GB SSD, so this is over 12% of my entire storage. Since this is a work machine, I need all the available space I can get.

Is there a way of "resetting" the storage, so it effectively goes back to having no cache? I know that with iTunes, I can just delete the locally stored items and it just understands the files are no longer stored locally. It doesn't look as though I can do that with Photos.

MacBook Pro

Posted on Aug 6, 2019 3:06 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

léonie

Level 10

197,237 points

Aug 6, 2019 1:23 PM in response to Jowie

Phots has no option to remove the downloaded files. as long as your Mac has some free storage it will keep the most recent downloads cached, so you do not have to download them over and over again.

If you want to clear the downloaded files, and you are sure, that all photos have been downloaded from iCloud, you could simply delete the current Photos Library on your work machine. Then start Photos again, with the option key ⌥ held down. Now select to create a new Photos Library. Enable this library as your system photo library in "Photos > Preferences > General". Make it your iCloud Photos Library in "Photos > Preferences > iCloud".

The library will begin to download from iCloud to the new, empty library, and initially be fully optimized.

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Answer 2

Jowie Author

Level 2

222 points

Aug 7, 2019 3:01 AM in response to léonie

That worked, thank you!

I tried this yesterday, however I left the original Photos Library file in the Trash rather than deleting it completely. Therefore, the system still saw it and wouldn't let me set a new System photo library. Once the file had been deleted from the Trash, I could set the new library to the new System library.

My library is now less than 2 GB. 😊

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Answer 3

léonie

Level 10

197,237 points

Aug 7, 2019 3:23 AM in response to Jowie

It is strange, that Photos did not allow you to switch the system photo library, while the previous library still existed. Perhaps iCloud had still been using the old library.

But great that it worked now!

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Answer 4

Jowie Author

Level 2

222 points

Aug 8, 2019 1:03 AM in response to léonie

Yeah possibly an alias/symbolic link thing happening behind the scenes with iCloud. Makes sense in case someone decides to move their library to a different folder while a syncd process is going on.

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